


We'll Definitely Write

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Wakes & Funerals, sitting shiva
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26712514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: Milly Michaelson’s world tilted off its axis soon after her fourteenth birthday, which she didn’t like to remember, anyway.
Relationships: Milly Michaelson & Female OCs, Milly Michaelson & Louis Michaelson
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	We'll Definitely Write

Milly Michaelson’s world tilted off its axis soon after her fourteenth birthday, which she didn’t like to remember, anyway. The only thing that stood out about that day was her father’s uncharacteristic gift of a Star of David on a delicate gold chain—it came in a little pink box with a ribbon. Her father’s eyes shone as he fastened it around Milly’s neck. “It suits you,” he told her. 

She would wear it for the first time at his funeral, along with a black crepe dress her mother had bought on clearance. 

During the ceremony, she didn’t look at the wooden casket. She kept her back straight, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and her eyes on Rabbi Mordetzky as he prayed. After, while sitting shiva at their apartment, Amy and Esther stood up from their stools (Mrs. Danziger was nice enough to bring them specially from her apartment downstairs) and embraced her gently, as if she were made of glass. “We’re so sorry,” Amy said, her eyes wide, and Esther nodded, eyebrows furrowed in sympathy. “He was a _really_ good man.”

“Thank you,” Milly said, forcing a smile. “It really means a lot that you guys came.” It was hard to look directly into their eyes. Her skin flamed with embarrassment, a ridiculous, all-encompassing kind. The door to her parents’ bedroom was faintly ajar, and through it she glimpsed the white sheet draped over the full-length mirror propped against the opposite wall. The sheet billowed slightly, buoyed by the breeze coming through an open window nearby. It looked almost like a ghost. A shiver went up her spine; Milly averted her eyes. Suddenly, she felt the need to apologize for the dirty dishes in the sink and the full laundry basket on the couch. Her friends were too kind to comment, but the urge came over her anyway, only to leave as fleetingly as it had come.

“Of course,” said Esther, twisting her brown hands together. She glanced at Amy. “We’ll always be here.” This time, it was Amy’s turn to nod. Milly thanked them again. She didn’t know what else to do. In the past few weeks since she last saw her, Esther had gotten her braces off. She’d been excited about getting them off before the start of freshman year. Milly wondered if she and Amy had celebrated the occasion.

She could hear the clanking and murmuring of her bubbe in the kitchen; she was making the meal of condolences with Mrs. Reinhart and Mrs. Danziger, their upstairs neighbors. Her mother was talking with a member of their synagogue in front of the shiva candle burning on the mantelpiece, her arms crossed over her chest. She could smell onions sizzling; her mouth started to water. She’d only eaten a banana that was three-quarters ripe that morning, and her appetite was finally coming back.

By the time the Kaddish and the mourner’s prayer was recited, Milly’s stomach was empty and her heart felt heavy. Louis, who’d fidgeted with his kippah all through the prayers, finally took it off when he ate, causing their bubbe to argue quietly but insistently with their mother as Milly poked at her casserole. Esther and Amy were at her elbows; their presence, instead of being a comfort, pressed down on her like invisible weights.

The next few days of junior high were vague. Esther and Amy sat with her at lunch, but any conversation they made was halting and awkward. Milly could almost feel the anxiety radiating off them—their need to make her feel included, despite the gulf that had opened up between them, was palpable. They didn’t spend time together after school or before it. Milly couldn’t blame them—she knew she was being a drag—but being alone just made it easier to fall headlong into napping in front of the TV from the time she got home from school to dinnertime. Occasionally, she waited by the phone, wondering if Amy or Esther would call to invite her to hang out somewhere. They never did.

A few teachers who attended the Michaelsons’ synagogue expressed their sympathies in the halls the last week of school. Her mom had told her she could skip it if she liked, but Milly went anyway. The summer stretched on ahead, long and foreboding and empty, and she wanted to avoid it as much as possible. She heard “may his memory be a blessing” more times in one week than she had in her whole life. Milly excused herself as soon as it was polite and hurried to her classes. It was just after finals, and most students spent class time signing yearbooks and sitting on desks, chatting.

On the last day of school, during history, Amy and Esther stopped by her desk and signed her yearbook. Milly’s cheeks flushed as she waited for their ballpoint pens to stop scritching. They shot her halfway apologetic smiles. “Maybe we can do something sometime,” said Esther hesitantly.

“Maybe,” said Amy, “we could have a goodbye party or something.” She searched Milly’s face, looking anxious. 

“Yeah,” Milly replied, trying to sound cheerful. “Maybe.” She pulled her yearbook toward her and pretended to be immersed in reading. She knew Esther’s crabbed scrawl and Amy’s loopy script like they were her own; it made her eyes sting a bit to see their words written in that vast sea of white.

 _Mil,_ Amy wrote, _It’s been a great year with you. We’ll always be friends, no matter how far away you are. Keep in touch! Amy._

Beside her, Esther wrote, _We love love LOVE you Mil! We’ll miss you at Lefkowicz! WRITE US, OK? Love, Esther._

Aaron Lefkowicz High was the school almost all the graduating students were being shuttled into that fall. Milly would be, too, if she weren’t moving. She stared at her friends’ words, tears of frustration brimming in her eyes. If they loved her so much—and she knew they did—why didn’t they hang out with her anymore? And why wasn’t she strong enough to ask them why? Whenever she tried picking up the phone, she inevitably thought, _You just lost your dad. They don’t want to be reminded of that when they hear your voice._ And what if—God forbid—they thought she was asking for pity? That was unthinkable. No, it was safer not to call, she would decide, placing the receiver back in its cradle.

Then, days later, the idea of contacting her friends would cross her mind, and the cycle would start over again. 

They inplored her to put her new address in their yearbooks, and Milly printed it carefully amid the numerous signatures of her classmates. “We’ll definitely write,” they assured her. Milly’s mouth felt filled with cotton; all she could do was nod dumbly at their reassurances. After they’d walked off, she shut her yearbook, gathered her things, and slipped out into the hall. Mrs. Robinsky was too busy fanning herself with a rolled-up magazine to notice.

In the girls’ bathroom, she stared at the stall door, losing herself in the graffiti kids had scratched into the dingy yellow plastic over the years: “PENN STRIDER 1968,” “M.P. + E.G. 4-EVER,” “MR. DOUGLAS IS A FAIRY,” and several crude drawings of male genitalia and women’s breasts. She wondered where all the kids who made those were now. She mentally ran through her classmates’ names that would fit the initials, but soon stopped. It was nicer to think that M.P. and E.G., whoever they were, had attended her junior high years and years ago—maybe even in 1968, like Penn Strider—and their love was memorialized on the door of this bathroom stall, still readable even years after they’d gone.

The more Milly returned to her bedroom after school, the more she found herself tired of the pale green walls patterned with tiny white rosebuds, the patchwork quilt she used as a bedspread that her bubbe made for her when she was a little kid, the way her mattress springs squeaked when she put her weight on them. All of it began to look nauseatingly pastel. When she walked around the circumference of her small, cramped room one afternoon, she felt the clutter of stuff she’d accrued over the years—friendship bracelets strung with plastic beads, children’s books she hadn’t looked at in years, stickers peeling off the walls, clothes that didn’t fit anymore, essays piled neatly in shoe boxes labeled from grades five through eight, et cetera—closing in on her. The haze of memories that accompanied everything made her feel sick. It felt familiar in all the wrong ways. 

_When we move,_ Milly thought, looking grimly at her bookshelf, _I’m going to bring as little as possible. Only the essentials._

She turned and saw the photos of Amy and Esther taped to her vanity mirror. Her stomach twisted. She resisted the urge to tear the pictures off. Instead, she stalked into her parents’ bedroom to ask if she could drag out a blanket from the closet. It was her bubbe’s quilt that made her feel the most terrible; it was a quilt made for a girl that didn’t exist anymore. 

It was three-thirty on a summer afternoon, and their snug apartment was dim. “Mom—” Milly began, then stopped. The coverlet of her parents’ unmade bed was rumpled; there was a person-shaped lump underneath that stirred when she spoke. Milly quickly retreated. Instead of getting another blanket, she opened the blinds on all the windows to let the sunlight through. 

Louis was playing with his G.I. Joes in the den. He threw an arm over his eyes and whined at her to stop as she opened the blinds on the window over the couch. “Mom’s _sleeping_ ,” he hissed. The walls of their apartment were thin, and light easily leaked through. 

Louis had been brought home from school by old Mrs. Reinhart from downstairs and was still moody about it. Milly didn’t envy him. Mrs. Reinhart was nice enough, but she took every opportunity to bring up the fact that she’d raised three girls to adulthood and was not fond of rambunctious little boys. 

“We need the sunlight,” Milly insisted, clambering off the couch. “Besides, she’s been sleeping all day.” She sat down beside him on the floor, looking up at the blank screen of their television. “Isn’t anything on?”

Louis arranged his G.I. Joes on the rug in a vague pattern. He didn’t look at her. “No.”

The silence of the apartment was unnerving. Even Max, who was padding around in the tiny bricked-in yard their landlord let them use, was quiet. When she looked through the ragged screen door her dad never got around to fixing, she saw he was lying on the grass with his head in his paws.

“Alright,” Milly said. “Then I’ll watch something.” She turned around on her knees and rooted out the remote from between the couch cushions.

“No, don’t,” pleaded Louis. “I like the quiet.”

Milly narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to be petty; in this screwed-up stage of her life, it felt like her prerogative. “I want to watch TV.”

“Mom—”

“I’ll keep the volume low. Don’t be such a creep.” Milly hopped up on the couch, put her feet on the arm with a sense of nonchalance she didn’t feel, and turned on the TV. The atmosphere around their apartment was so oppressive she wanted to fight against it. It offended her sensibilities, clanged against all the things she’d been taught. The mourning period of their lives was over; it had ended when the sheets were taken off the mirrors and the prayers were said, when everyone had left their low little stools and went home. It embarrassed her that all of them weren’t finished grieving. Milly knew in her heart that it was ridiculous to expect it to take so little time, but God, it’d be so much easier if they could collectively vault over the swollen black hole of grief and get on with their lives, to smooth over that little abscess in their lives like it never existed. 

_Amy and Esther are going to want me to put on a happy face for the move,_ she thought, somewhat guiltily. She didn’t want her to leave them with an image of her being gloomy; they’d want to see the Milly they used to know. _What if they don’t come at all?_ a tiny voice in the back of her mind wondered.

On the TV, a grinning woman was advertising laundry detergent. Suddenly the image turned snowy and the audio petered out into a low buzz. Louis, before she could move, banged the side of the TV with his fist. 

“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem.”

Milly scooted over, and, right on cue, Louis climbed on the couch beside her. “You know,” she remarked, eyeing the scattered action figures, “you can’t leave all your crap around the new house.”

He grabbed a nearby pillow and punched it into shape before pushing his face into it, emitting a muffled sigh through his nostrils. “I know.”

The summer was a blur. Milly watched sitcoms with Louis throughout the long afternoons, only stepping out to buy pints of mint chocolate chip ice-cream from the nearby convenience store. The sun baked her bare shoulders every time she exited their apartment. Clad only in a loose-fitting tank top and pajama shorts, she moved through her neighborhood without really seeing it. The familiarity of it was beginning to foster an ache in her chest, and she knew that if she looked—really drank in the sights and sounds she’d known almost her whole life—it would only be more painful. She focused instead on the sun’s unwavering heat, the welcome chill of the convenience store freezers, the slap of her sneakers against the pavement, the taste of cold, sweet ice-cream on her tongue—sounds and feelings that could come from anywhere. Anything else, including her friends’ unavailability, she put away in the back of her mind. 

_Focus on the now,_ she thought, sucking a drop of ice-cream from the curve of her thumbnail as she entered her apartment, which was sweltering in the heat. Max was lying on the dead grass in his brick enclosure. Milly paused and leaned out the door to pat his head. She didn’t envy him in this heat, given his thick fur. At least at the new place, he’d have infinitely more room to move around. 

Louis was lying on the couch. Milly tossed him his pint, which he nearly fumbled. Soon, they were settled down again, watching a _Cheers_ rerun they’d seen a week or two ago, eating their ice-cream in a slow, halfhearted way. 

“Next time I’ll get pistachio,” Milly said. 

“Yeah.” Louis leaned back with a sigh. “I’m sick of mint-chip.”

The one good thing about summer was that, two weeks in, their mother started appearing from her bedroom in the mornings, dressed and groomed. “I’m going to go check on the house,” she’d say—either that or go tie up loose ends with the realtor, or clear up something with the bank. She always said it so cheerfully, as if everything was normal. She was at the bank this morning, hence the ice-cream at ten A.M.

Louis suddenly set his pint down on the floor by the couch and slumped down against the couch’s arm. “I can’t wait till we move,” he muttered.

“You don’t mean that,” Milly said, and licked the back of her spoon. “You hate the idea of moving.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’ve been complaining about it this whole time.”

“I changed my mind, I guess.”

Milly frowned, sitting up and setting her ice-cream on her lap. “You won’t miss playing with Jerome?”

Louis stared at the TV as he spoke. “He doesn’t do it right,” he said. “He always digs up my G.I. Joes’ graves and he laughs when we play war.” He turned his head to glare bitterly at his sister. “You can’t laugh in a war zone. You’d get _shot_.”

A moment passed. Then, Milly muttered, crossing her arms across her chest, “You should at least talk to him. Is he coming to say goodbye on moving day?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“He should.”

Louis made a noncommittal noise and flopped over on his stomach. Onscreen, Sam was letting a dying man tend the bar. “I hate _Cheers_.”

Milly pursed her lips, then sighed. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Milly lay in bed the dawn of moving day, staring at the ceiling. Her heart beat wildly, sweat cooling on her forehead. 

She’d been on the Ferris wheel she’d ridden at a carnival years ago. For some reason, the bar had lifted, and she was balancing on the edge of the cart at the wheel’s peak height. The wheel was stuck, she remembered, and she was trying to get down. One white sneaker dangled in the air; the cart squeaked on its hinge, and suddenly, she lost her balance and fell. She tried to call for help, but her scream was ripped away by the wind. She could see through her wildly rippling hair that the ground was hurtling closer. When she expected to smash into the pavement, instead she was suddenly back where she started, falling again from that same huge height. 

She’d been having that dream since shortly after the funeral. 

Milly turned around in bed and peered out the window above her headboard. It was dawn. _I hope the sky’s gray today,_ she thought, resting on her knees. Overcast weather would fit her mood.

Unfortunately, it started getting sunny at around eight, when the Michaelsons were up and ready to leave. Milly surveyed her empty room. She thought it would make her feel happy, cleansed, to see everything packed away, but it just made her sad instead. _Jeez,_ she thought, irritated at her own gloom. _I can’t win, can I?_

“Mil,” said Charlene, making her daughter jump and turn around. Her smile was apologetic. “We gotta go, hon.” She paused and looked at the bare bedroom. “Say goodbye to your old room,” she said, looking at her meaningfully.

“Bye, room,” said Milly. She felt childish saying it. Hearing her small, uncertain voice in that empty room made heat rush to her cheeks. _You’ll never come back here,_ she suddenly thought. The realization came over her suddenly, making her feel cold, like someone walking across her grave. _This is real. This is goodbye._

She went out onto the street where the moving truck idled, swallowing the lump in her throat. Louis was already in the car, talking to Jerome, who’d hopped in alongside him. When Milly popped her head through the rolled-down window to say hi, they both looked at her as if she’d interrupted something of immeasurable importance, something teenage girls could never understand. It lifted her spirits a bit to see that Louis had a friend to see him off. Then, abruptly, she saw them.

Esther and Amy waited on the curb, looking nervous. It hurt Milly to see them that way—they looked like they were someplace completely foreign, instead of standing on the same sidewalk they’d drawn four-square formations on in pastel chalk when they were six.

“Hi,” Milly said, but before she could do anything else, they threw their arms around her. She stumbled backward.

“Oh, Mil,” sighed Esther into her hair, and Amy squeezed her tight. It made Milly want to cry, that squeeze. It was a goodbye, a final farewell, something immutable and permanent. When they pulled away, she felt like something of her was leaving with them, something she didn’t want to give away.

They left at nine. Milly turned and craned her neck to peer between the boxes in the trunk, watching her friends wave goodbye. Amy was yelling something through cupped hands, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“You gave them our address, didn’t you, Mil?” asked Charlene as they turned the corner.

Milly adjusted her parakeet, Tilly, whose cage was nestled in her lap. “Yeah,” she said, looking out the window. “They said they’d write.”


End file.
